There has been a lot of buzz about the recently opened Marina Abramović exhibition at the Royal Academy. “Terrifying and vital” was Adrian Searle’s verdict on the Serbian performance artist’s retrospective. Well, as it happens, I have tickets to go this week and I am definitely terrified.
The show made headlines when it emerged that visitors must squeeze sideways between a nude male and female model to gain access to the exhibition. It’s not the nudity that bothers me – as a user of communal gym changing rooms, I have seen it all. Nor am I fazed by whether to make eye contact with the models or not as my eyes will be closed. This means the other tricky choice about whether to face the man or the woman as I move between their bodies won’t be an issue. No, what freaks me out is the potential transmission of germs. Why is nobody else worried about this?
I mentioned it to the friend who acquired the tickets. Was she not worried? “About seeing naked bodies?” No, the fact that we might catch something. “I hadn’t thought about it. Maybe just wear a big parka,” she replied.
A parka? I don’t want my coat to turn into a petri dish. Clearly, she hasn’t seen the photos.
“I’m sure the risk of contracting a fatal disease from brushing past them for a few seconds is pretty low,” said another friend. “It’s probably the same risk as when you immediately pick something up off the floor – you know, the five second rule?”
This is not comforting. There is a good reason why I’m a germaphobe: my doctor father was a specialist in infectious diseases. I still remember the time he caught me picking a perfectly good orange Spangle off the kitchen floor. “But it was only there for a few seconds, it doesn’t count …” Cue a long lecture about how if food is contaminated with virulent E coli bacteria, the effect is immediate and the consequences could be dire. By rights, it should have put me off boiled sweets for life but it didn’t. It did, however, affect my life in other ways.
Crowds concern me, especially in poorly sanitised spaces like festivals. I can be a troublesome guest, especially if you offer me food that I suspect might be past its sell-by date (sometimes I surreptitiously check). I have been known to interrogate stallholders at farmers’ markets. “You really don’t know the difference between cream and buttercream?” I draw the line at giving my Ocado delivery an antibacterial spa treatment before putting it in the fridge because that would be weird, but I do have form when it comes to soaking apples in baking soda water.
Now, official germ warfare season has come around again and I am already operating from a position of peak vigilance. “Have you got a cold?” I demanded of a snuffling co-worker the other day. They weren’t happy. “Not really. I’m past the contagious stage anyway.” Contagious stage? What does that even mean?
This autumn promises to be particularly worrisome for the germ-conscious because there are multiple potential threats: actual flu, the reported return of swine flu and the dreaded C-word, this time without the security blanket of a booster vaccine for most of us.
You might imagine that Covid would have been the pinnacle of stress for someone like me. Strangely, it wasn’t. Rather it felt as if, finally, people were waking up to the hazards of germs, that they were speaking my language. With everyone spending so much time hand-washing and layering on the antibacterial super sprays, I felt oddly safe.
I didn’t go to particularly extreme lengths to protect myself, though I did wear disposable cotton gloves quite a lot. But maybe all the germ consciousness paid off because I am one of those medical anomalies, a person living in a densely populated area who is also a “Novid” – AKA someone who has never had Covid.
Obviously, I would like my luck on that front to hold out. That was one thing my dear father instilled in me about illness: a lot of it is down to chance, and there is great kindness in remembering that. So, I was trying to think of a compassionate way to cancel my friend’s gallery outing when she messaged me. “Good news, I contacted the gallery and there is another entrance.”
Anita Chaudhuri is a freelance journalist
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